1. UKM Learning and Research Repository
2. PHD Thesis / Tesis PHD
3. Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Fakulti Sains Sosial dan Kemanusiaan

Title:	Alienation and intersectionality : a study of Adrienne Kennedy's selected plays
Authors:	Jabboury Latifa Ismaeel (P77398)
Supervisor:	Ruzy Suliza Hashim, Prof. Datin Dr.
Keywords:	Adrienne Kennedy -- Criticism and interpretation Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia -- Dissertations Dissertations, Academic -- Malaysia
Issue Date:	28-Mar-2019
Description:	This study focuses on Adrienne Kennedy, one of the pioneers African-American dramatists during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The objectives of this research are to identify the ways in which Kennedy represents issues of alienation from the points of view of African-American women, categorize the emerging themes of intersectionality in her selected plays, and examine the dramatist's interrogations of her characters' experiences to fit into a capitalistic patriarchal American society. The three selected texts, Funnyhouse of a Negro, The Owl Answers and A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White, represent her portrayals of the psycho/social struggles of African-American women. These struggles illustrate the relationship between alienation and intersectionality which form the theoretical thrust of this study. Intersectionality is a term coined by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in order to understand the combination of social, cultural and biological aspects of identity such as race, gender, class, and hybridity which overlap on multiple levels and share in systems of oppression, social inequality and injustice. By focusing on female protagonists in the three plays, the proposed framework provides insights into issues of "interlocking" oppression and their marginalization which bring about disenfranchisement. The methodology of analysis is constructed on three phases based on Kennedy's playwriting life during the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement. The first phase focuses on one of Kennedy's early plays. The second phase concentrates on one of her middle plays, and the third phase focuses on one of her late plays. The findings show that the protagonists in the first and second phases fail to deal with the intersecting systems of oppression, and the drastic ways in which they resolve their abject alienation which may be read either as self-annihilation or a metaphorical annihilation as a symbol of liberation. In the third phase, Kennedy empowers her African-American female character by demonstrating her agency in getting out of her predicament. In the span of these three phases, Kennedy's characters emerge victorious from the hostile environment that seems to collude in their oppression. The implication of this study shows the vitality of the proposed frame of alienation and intersectionality as a means to read the drama of black feminism and to understand the significance of the interlocking-identities attached in the psyche of the African-American women,Ph.D
Pages:	229
Publisher:	UKM, Bangi
Appears in Collections:	Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Fakulti Sains Sosial dan Kemanusiaan

Items in DSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.